Total Number of Players - All Countries

While still emphasizing a selected few countries - the seven with the highest player count in 2020 - this plot shows the total number of players registered with FIDE

Russia (RUS) and the USSR (USR) were combined for simplicity in this plot.

We had assumed, before working with the data, that China and India both would show huge increases in volume of chess players, especially considering their vast population increases as a whole. On the contrary, only India (IND) exhibits such an increase, while China comes in at 45th most “populous” country for chess players in 2020. Where Magnus Carlsen’s success in Norway may be related to Norway’s increasing chess population, and Vishy Anand’s success to India’s, it seems such players as Wang Hao, Bu Xiangxi, and even Ding Liren have not had the same impact in China - yet. The animated plot illustrates how European countries such as Russia, Germany, and others have remained a more constant proportion of the total chess community.

Top Players - Selected Countries

This section concerns the top players from those countries examined in detail earlier:

USA = United States, FRA = France, NOR = Norway, RUS = Russia, IND = India, CHN = China, PUR = Puerto Rico

Gary Kasparov was the top player in Russia for most of the time of this data. The line flattens out because he became inactive, and his rating of 2812 stands unbroken by another Russian since. We assume the same has happened with Bobby Fischer in the U.S. for those flat-lined portions as well. While only a few countries are shown here, Magnus Carlsen (NOR) is actually the highest rated player in the world for much of his time on our plot. To tie that in to some of the other points we are interested in with this analysis, his proximity to the others shows that the best Chinese and Indian players are extremely competitive at the top level.

Age and Rating Correlation

The data we have used also illustrates how often the younger players are those most highly rated, i.e. the most skilled. Due to the vast size of the data we used, for this section we only examine grandmasters.

This selection could have a few effects that affect the quality of the data. One requirement for attaining the GM title is to reach a rating of 2500 (marked in dark blue on the graph). This means our data only looks at how players perform after already reaching 2500, and does not illustrate how quickly players climb to that rating. The GM title is a life-long award, meaning that a player keeps their title even after dropping below the 2500 floor. So, while a player could immediately cease playing well after receiving the title and drop rating, we hope this data represents those masters whose play reflects their maximum skill level through all years of play.

This format is admittedly rather dense, but the approximate shape of the plot should be apparent. The average rating for each age group is generally lower than the age group above (younger than) it. Also interesting to note is that a new age group of grandmasters appears each new year. For the time period 2013-2020, but for a few exceptions, the youngest new grandmasters are around 17 years old.